Although it’s not strictly autobiographical, it does have its roots in Yang’s own life. The dad wants him to follow his footsteps, but the son just wants to play videogames. In the book Level Up-a story about videogames and Asian parenting-Yang and artist Thien Pham took that experience and crafted a story about the son of a gastroenterologist. It wasn’t always easy being a cartoonist in an immigrant family, though. I’m also heavily influenced by the cartoonists I came up with: Derek Kirk Kim, Lark Pien, Jason Shiga, Thien Pham, Jesse Hamm, Raina Telgemeier, Kazu Kibuishi.” Click on the excerpt to read the entire comic! I love Lynda Barry, Osamu Tezuka, Jeff Smith, Jay Stephens. Yang says of his influences: “I can give you a list as long as my arm. His inspiration in cartooning wasn’t limited to Disney. Although that didn’t happen (or maybe I should say, it hasn’t happened yet), his illustrations still carry a little of that influence, and you could easily imagine his characters brought to life in traditional cel animation.
He started drawing comics in the fifth grade, mostly in the Disney style because he had aspirations to be a Disney animator. Yang has been drawing pretty much his entire life-since he was two years old, according to his mother. It’s a fascinating look at being Chinese in America, and it’s no wonder this book was able to fuel that jet pack ride, a trip that had actually started much earlier. It felt like somebody had strapped a jet pack to my back.”Īmerican Born Chinese is a collection of interweaving stories focusing on different characters: Jin Wang, a Chinese kid who moves to a new school and feels totally out of place-he wants to be American, but everyone wants to lump him in with the newly-immigrated Wei-Chen the Monkey King, kung-fu master, who wants to be a god Chin-Kee, the worst possible Chinese stereotype (buckteeth and squinty eyes and terrible accent and all), who shows up to ruin his cousin Danny’s life. It did not feel like a natural progression to me. When asked if he sees the publication of American Born Chinese as a natural progression in his career as a cartoonist, Yang replied: “The response to American Born Chinese by readers, librarians, bookstore owners, and teachers was just crazy. Gene Yang’s self-portrait as the Monkey King, and his breakout title ‘American Born Chinese.’Īmerican Born Chinese was published in 2006, but prior to that Yang had already published a few comics-some comics online at (now home to ) and Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks, later republished in the Animal Crackers collection by Slave Labor Graphics. Since then, First Second and Yang have both continued to create amazing comics and rack up a lot of achievements. Photo: First Second Books, used with permission.ġ0 years ago, a new publishing company known as First Second Books published a comic book called American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.
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